Kennedy Center will close for renovations after judge blocks returning Trump's name to building

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to close most of the iconic performing arts venue just hours after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Donald Trump's name to the building.

In a social media post, Trump said the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was allowed to move forward with plans to add his name to the building. A federal judge has twice said that can't happen without the approval of Congress.

“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing," U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in the latest ruling Tuesday.

The Justice Department appealed the ruling. Trump, who was named the Kennedy Center's chairman last year by loyalists on the board, participated in the virtual board meeting and said on social media he'd given $17 million to an endowment intended to support the institution.

The meeting included testy exchanges at points between Trump and Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who has led the campaign to block efforts to memorialize the president at the Kennedy Center. At one point, Beatty referred to Trump as someone who caused “extreme harm,” according to a participant in the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

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Trump and the court: If he wins, he's happy. When he loses, he ridicules justices he appointed

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has taken his wins, and more notably his losses, at the U.S. Supreme Court quite personally.

It is a court he shaped with three nominees during his first term and he has frequently expressed admiration when the court rules his way, only to turn sharply critical when it delivers him a defeat.

On Monday, the court rejected his administration’s planned restrictions on mail ballots for the midterm elections and by the morning on Tuesday, Trump took to social media to denigrate the decision and the justices he had appointed who rejected Trump's argument.

None of the three justices wrote about their rationale for joining the majority opinion, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated he might see things differently if the election wasn’t coming up so quickly. Of the nine-member court, only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito fully agreed with the administration.

Trump's rebuke also resurfaced his frustration over losses on tariffs and birthright citizenship — two other issues where the conservative majority court has checked the power of the Republican president.

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Trump's push to restrict mail ballots has failed. Other efforts to reshape the midterms are ongoing

NEW YORK (AP) — The Supreme Court this week closed the chapter on one of President Donald Trump’s boldest efforts to reshape November’s elections — a plan that would have demanded a dramatic overhaul of the nation’s mail voting processes on what most election officials agreed was an impossibly short timeline.

But the case was just one example of the Republican president’s numerous attempts to assert federal control over the upcoming midterms. Several others remain in various states of play, even as mail ballots have been sent out in at least three states and early voting starts in others this week.

Recently, the Department of Justice ordered officials in more than two dozen states to preserve records from the 2024 election as part of a campaign to force them to turn over detailed voter data despite repeated court losses.

And lacking the sensitive voter data the administration wants from many states, the Department of Homeland Security has launched its own probe to find noncitizen voters on state rolls, an effort that a federal whistleblower says is rushed, error-ridden and potentially violating state laws.

Meanwhile, Trump has continued to falsely claim that mail ballots are corrupt, that noncitizens are abundant on voter lists and that Democratic election fraud is widespread. During the recent Republican convention, the president goaded his fans in a verbal pledge to “cheat like hell, like they do.”

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Nick Reiner avoids death penalty over his parents' killings but still faces life in prison

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner 's son will not face the death penalty on charges he fatally stabbed his parents after lying in wait at their home in Los Angeles late last year, prosecutors said Tuesday.

If convicted, the maximum sentence 33-year-old Nick Reiner could get is life without the possibility of parole, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said at a news conference. Before reaching its decision, Hochman said his office did a thorough review, including speaking to Rob and Michele Singer Reiner’s families and evaluating mitigating factors in Nick Reiner’s favor.

Nick Reiner, who briefly appeared at a court hearing Tuesday morning, has twice pleaded not guilty. The death penalty had been on the table because of the lying-in-wait allegation, the fact that multiple people were killed, and the use of a knife, which is considered a dangerous weapon. However, it's been two decades since California's last execution, and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on the practice in 2019.

Reiner's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene, said prosecutors made the right decision.

“Nick has a serious mental illness and a long history of struggling with self-medication. His circumstances are a tragic example of how difficult it can be for people experiencing significant mental health challenges to access and navigate the treatment and support they need,” Greene said in a statement. “Nothing can undo the profound loss experienced by the Reiner family and those who loved them. Our hearts remain with the family.”

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FBI chief Kash Patel defends hiring policy changes on prostitution, bestiality at fiery hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel defended Tuesday a recent policy change to allow some applicants who have engaged in prostitution and bestiality to be considered for employment, insisting that the move was made to enable victims of those acts to apply for a job without fear of automatic disqualification.

The subject arose during a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who participated in investigations of President Donald Trump and suggested that agents might be dispatched to the polls on Election Day amid Justice Department and White House concerns about voter fraud.

The hours-long hearing featured the name-calling and bitingly personal exchanges that have come to define Patel's appearances on Capitol Hill, with Democrats characterizing the Trump appointee as unqualified, criticizing him for politically charged investigations into Trump's enemies and highlighting travel that has included a trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy in which he partied with U.S. hockey players and a snorkeling excursion at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.

“He’s an incompetent lackey. He's like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent,” said an exasperated Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, his voice rising in anger.

“What a mockery you are,” he added.

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Senate blocks cryptocurrency regulation as Democrats push back on Trump investments

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked legislation to create a new regulatory framework for cryptocurrency, stalling an industry-backed effort to place new guardrails around digital assets after demanding more limits on President Donald Trump's investments.

The 49-50 vote on whether to move forward with the legislation was a pivotal election-year test for the $2.3 trillion cryptocurrency market as the industry has pushed aggressively for a uniform set of rules. The Senate debate came as cryptocurrency companies have become a major political force, and as Trump has amassed significant wealth in crypto while in office.

While some Democrats are friendly toward the industry and support the idea of regulation, they have been adamant that the bill include strong ethics safeguards to prevent the president and his family from enriching themselves while he's in office. The opposition appears to have only solidified two months before the midterm elections, despite significant donations that crypto groups have given to some Democrats in recent years. In the end, no Democrats supported it.

“Let’s make sure that we do not pass a crypto bill that will let Donald Trump continue to rake in billions of dollars in crypto profits while working families across this country struggle to deal with higher prices and an economy that gets worse by the day,” said Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee.

Several Democrats who have been supportive of the bill aside from the ethics concerns said they were still open to negotiating.

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Saudi crown prince goes to Egypt for support against Houthi strikes, and other Mideast developments

With his kingdom under attack, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince on Tuesday reached out to Egypt for support against Yemen's Houthi rebels who have disrupted key shipping routes, contributing to a spike in the cost of oil around the world.

Egypt is unlikely to offer military help to Saudi Arabia, but the country is influential in the Arab world and can help rally support. Separately, a Houthi official said Tuesday that Saudi warplanes struck Yemen, killing three people, including two children.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said it destroyed two Iranian boats. And a new appeal went out from the Iranian government seeking volunteers to learn how to handle assault rifles.

Here’s a look at the latest news in the Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman traveled to Egypt to see President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Tuesday. Neither side gave firm details on any future steps, though el-Sissi's office said there was “unwavering” support for the Red Sea neighbor.

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US stocks slip after oil prices and the bond market crank up the pressure

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks slipped Tuesday after oil prices and the bond market cranked up the pressure on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 328 points, or 0.6%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8%.

They felt pressure as the yield on the 10-year Treasury, which is the centerpiece of the U.S. bond market, climbed to 5.00% from 4.97% late Monday and briefly touched 5.04% overnight. It’s been jumping to its highest level in years, and Monday was the first time it breached 5% since 2023.

Higher yields mean everyone from the U.S. government to households to businesses must pay more in interest to borrow money, which slows the overall economy. They also make people less willing to pay high prices for stocks because they can earn more from sitting in bonds, which are considered safer investments.

“The result is a market that must work harder to generate earnings growth just as investors become less willing to pay premium valuations for that growth,” according to Darrell Cronk, president of Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

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Ed Sheeran's tour in trouble after opening acts drop out in solidarity with rapper Macklemore

NEW YORK (AP) — Ed Sheeran’s tour of North and South America was plunged into chaos Tuesday when four of his supporting acts abruptly quit in solidarity with the rapper Macklemore, who was dropped for making pro-Palestinian comments onstage.

Hours after Sheeran posted on social media about Macklemore's ouster and attributed the decision to the tour's promoters, Irish acts Aaron Rowe and Beoga, the Danish band Lukas Graham, and Finneas posted on Instagram that they were leaving the tour.

Rowe and Lukas Graham would have been replacements for Macklemore on Sheeran’s remaining U.S. dates, while Beoga had been performing several songs — including some the Irish folk band co-wrote — with Sheeran around the middle of each set. Finneas, who is Billie Eilish’s brother and musical collaborator, was due to tour with Sheeran in South America later this year.

“Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed,” Finneas said on Instagram. “I have decided to withdraw from my upcoming tour dates with Ed Sheeran. I stand with Palestine and its people.”

The moves by his fellow artists put enormous pressure on Sheeran, who has tried to avoid politics and taking a side in the Gaza conflict, arguing that his fans don't come to his shows to hear politics.

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Lionel Messi added to Argentina's roster for Oct. 6 friendly that team says will be farewell match

BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Lionel Messi might have one last dance with Argentina after all.

Despite announcing his international retirement, the 39-year-old Inter Miami star was included Tuesday in Lionel Scaloni’s 28-man Argentina squad ahead of three home friendlies.

Messi has yet to confirm whether he will join the team, but the head of Argentina soccer said the icon accepted the invitation for the Oct. 6 game against Benin in Buenos Aires for what will be a grand finale.

“After a conversation with senior national team coach Lionel Scaloni, we decided to invite the best player in the world — our icon, our captain Lionel Messi — so that he can have the farewell he deserves on October 6,” said Claudio Tapia, president of the Argentine Football Association.

Messi led Argentina to the 2022 World Cup title and helped the Albiceleste reach the final at the 2026 edition.

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